Tag: MSW

As March dawns, we enter the month of Social Work Appreciation! This year the NASW theme for the month is Elevate Social Work. The idea behind the month is simple, to elevate the profession, each other, and ourselves. Creating positive and professional depictions of social work in our communities and media is crucial and often an additional task we take on above and beyond our normal tasks. However, this month I want to create space to elevate each other.

Social Worker’s Companion Blog will again be sending out certificates of appreciation to Social Workers all through out the month of March. If you would like one emailed to a Social Worker you think deserves to be elevated, just send me their first name and email here. Don’t be afraid to request one for yourself too!

Last year, I did one for all the staff I supervise at my agency. This blog also sent out over 50 certificates to Social Workers across the US, UK, India, and Canada. If you are a supervisor and want to make a batch for your staff, just email me and I will send you the fillable version of the certificate.

So if there is a Social Worker who has inspired you, just send me a line and they will get the certificate below personalized and emailed with a note saying that someone recognized them as an inspirational social worker.

I am excited to announce a guest post today featuring Ben Barrett of the “How To Social Worker.” Check out his great piece below!

Social Work and Integrated Care

What exactly is integrated care? And why does it matter?

For so long, those we serve have been treated in silos of care. If you have a medical issue- go to your primary care. If you have a drug problem- go to the substance abuse clinic. And if you have psychiatric issues- go to a mental health agency.

In these detached silos, there is generally little to no communication. Providers work in their specialty and do not consider issues outside their scope.

This has severely undermined treatment and the well-being of patients.

It is safe to say that silos of care are most ineffective for complex care patients. Regardless of your title or agency, if you are not considering these other silos, you are damaging your client’s potential to progress.

As a social worker, we are case managers first—coordinating care, linking services, and supporting holistic health. As a case manager, you are in perfect position to transcend these silos of care to promote value based treatment.

The profession of social work is seated well to make significant changes to our healthcare system. As a case manager, we can assure that providers are aware that the asthma a family doctor might be treating is a result of cocaine use being treated by another.

Without this bridge in services provided by social work, the family doctor may prescribe an inhaler, which would have essentially no benefit, because it’s not treating the real issue.

We are at the forefront of reducing unnecessary costs and promoting holistic care. It is these guidelines that will show immense utility for local hospitals, which has already begun to set the stage for legislative action.

What can you do now to help your organization get on board with integrated care?

First, get out of your office. You cannot case manage from a cubicle. It is in your client’s best interest that you are with them at their critical appointments to advocate on their behalf.

Secondly, spend time with your clients. The relationship and trust you build is equal to the likelihood your client will follow through with any treatment plan.

The provider may prescribe a diet for diabetes. But, if you know the challenge isn’t so much a diet as affording nutritious food, then you can intervene and support a discussion on nutritious food that is also affordable.

As the healthcare system evolves, we are likely to see more integrated systems. There won’t just be a social worker supporting the bridge of silos. There will be behavioral health, primary care, and even dentistry within one system.

That does not leave out the need for social work, however. Integrated systems will promote better health outcomes. But as a social worker, you will be tasked with supporting meaningful treatment planning.

Integrated care is absolutely the future of healthcare and supported by professionals like social workers.

It is your task to help your agency create meaningful policy and change with integrated care in mind.

–Ben Barrett

Bio

Ben Barrett of The How to Social Workerwrites about mental health topics for both professionals and those who experience its effects. A unique perspective is offered with Ben as he has gone through significant mental health issues himself and now is a mental health social worker and clinical supervisor. If you have interest in either the professional side of mental health or as someone looking for strategies to manage its effects, download Ben’s free eBook, where 6 top professionals offer you advice on mental health management and advocacy!

Check out my new article published today in the fall issue of the New Social Worker Magazine! Thinking about AmeriCorps as a way to social work and want to talk first hand with some one who has done it? Contact me -would love to connect!

When I became a supervisor in the social work field, I was the youngest one on my team. Being in this position, I reached out for resources wherever possible, including reading a lot of materials on social work supervision.

I think part of being a young supervisor is that I adopted a more collaborative versus authoritarian supervisory style, that took into account the perspective of all members on my team, who often had many more years experience than myself.

I wanted to share a few pieces from one of the books that I found helpful as I navigated the new experience of providing supervision in the hopes that it will be useful to others who find themselves with similar feelings to what I described.

The first place to start is to evaluate and be self-aware of your leadership style. Do you know what style you tend towards? If not, read on!

Authoritarian Leadership Style: magnifies the bigger picture and links individual’s work to this bigger picture.

Strengths: ” provides clear direction,” “mobilizes people towards a vision,” “provides clear feedback on what is and is not working.”

Challenges : ” can become overbearing” ” can be dismissed” when the leader is not able to get staff on board with the larger vision or if staff feel that the leader does not “have the knowledge or experience” to support the vision.

Democratic Leadership Style: “operates from principles of participation and collaboration”

Challenges : Can lead to “a sense of lack of direction and leadership” and more practically can lead to the “frustration of endless meetings.”

Coaching Leadership Style: “focuses on individual strengths and traits of workers and invests and grows these for the future”

Strengths: “able to have a high level of delegation” to workers through use of the support of frequent dialogue.

Challenges : The major drawback of this style is the time involved in making this style work.

Most of us feel most comfortable within one of these leadership styles. However, we are stronger and more versatile leaders when we can harness the strengths of each style within various situations and with various staff that may have different leadership needs.

Utilizing emotional intelligence will guide us towards which style is most appropriate for the tasks and persons we encounter as supervisors. For example, a supervisor who is able to blend authoritarian and affiliative leadership style are able to provide their staff with “clear vision and standards” while also showing a “caring and nurturing approach” that builds team committment.

How have you found a leadership style that has created a healthy, supported, and productive team? What experiences as a supervisor helped shape your leadership style? What supervisors have made an impact on you- what did they do to support your work? Write me your thoughts and I would love to share them in a future blog post! Write me below!

Sharing below a new article of mine published in the New Social Worker Magazine today. Enjoy and check out the rest of the magazine for some great content! Be sure to comment and let me know your thoughts!

Anyone who has met me knows I think a lot about music. I like to play it, create it, and enjoy it. Lyrics from certain songs have had a significant impact on how I see the world and have also helped me to process emotions.

I keep an ear out for songs that have social or emotional value, as well as musical beauty. The song featured below checks all those boxes. Her message to society and those who have experience sexual assault is clear, as well as empathetic. It is a connection point to those who may have experienced assault or walked a friend through such an experience.

As someone who works in the homelessness field, the song is especially poignant for me. You don’t have to work very long in the homelessness field to hear story after story about those assaulted while just trying to find a safe place to sleep each night. That’s why it is on this social worker’s playlist.

The work social workers do could often be summed up this way…working to remind society of those that tend to be forgotten.

Dorothy Day, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker movement, said it this way-

“We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it.”

So we remind them. And, we remind ourselves.

In my undergrad years, I did an year long BSW internship with a home health agency. I worked with their LCSW. One day we got called out to a rural area to meet with a senior who was recovering from heart surgery. The visiting nurse thought a social worker should be involved.

His trailer was pretty dim due to the thick nicotine stains in the windows. We sat on a couch to start the visit and I remember the ash that had built up over time covered every surface. I realized there was soiled laundry piled on the ground.

He was nearly blind. He was a veteran, but unconnected to VA services. That first visit consisted of assessing the various areas of his life while on hold with the VA, whose physical office was a 2 hour drive away.

During that wait time, we found that the only food in the house was a half-eaten box of doughnuts. We found that every month he paid his space rent, bought cigarettes, and then gave the rest of his disability check to his grandson, who had just had a child of his own and was struggling to make ends meet.

Importantly, we found that giving this money to his grandson was the one act that still gave meaning to his life. It was the one reason he still wanted to be alive.

As we drove away , with a splitting headache from the copious amounts of second hand smoke, I wondered how someone could have flown totally under the radar of all the social systems and even the natural supports usually in place. As I continued in the practice of social work, I would learn that for seniors, and many other populations, it is not uncommon to be totally out of sight to mainstream society.

It was also an important lesson in how to connect with the inner purpose that makes someone want to get up in the morning, to let the work flow from there.

It was one of those cases that you never forget. It made me look at my community differently. It made me wonder what the lives behind each door in my neighborhood were really like.

Mandy

p. s. I would love to hear what case has had a particular impact on you. Drop me a email.